Food and Wine Roasted Beets with Pistachios, Herbs, and Orange

As I've mentioned before I love beets. I have been known to eat an entire jar of pickled beets by myself in one sitting. I am also the same person that gets overly excited when I go to a craft show and they have someone selling jars of pickled beets in their stall, yum. For most of my life I enjoyed my beets pickled and eaten sliced or whole with a large serving of sour cream. Everyone else in my family couldn't stand my beloved beets and refused to partake in my delicious treasures. However, approximately two years ago I stumbled across a recipe for roasted beets and everything changed. My family discovered that they could actually enjoy beets. Now I make roasted beets a couple of times a month and they are always happily eaten. The March issue of Food and Wine magazine had a recipe for Roasted Beets with Pistachios, Herbs and Orange which looked very easy to prepare and full of flavor from the fresh herbs.

This recipe has 15 ingredients. It takes an hour and twenty minutes to prepare and cook, twenty minutes of which is active and makes 8 servings. I had no problems finding any of the ingredients at my local grocery store and made no ingredient modifications. The beets that I purchased were very large and therefore took longer than the hour baking time suggested by the recipe. I had a hard time breaking the cinnamon stick into pieces and only broke it in half instead of into four pieces. To save on time during dinner prep I made the dressing in the morning, which I feel helped to make the flavors blend together and become more flavorful by the time it was served at dinner. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

While this recipe takes 15 ingredients, the taste is really quite simple. The fresh herbs create a nice fresh flavor, which is light and not overbearing. The presentation is beautiful with the color from the beets and the contrast with the green color of the pistachios and celery leaves. My husband liked this dish, but felt that for him it was a little too simple in taste. My two boys ate the beets, but picked off the nuts and fresh herbs. A beautiful dish that is very healthy and simple.

For the recipe Roasted Beets with Pistachios, Herbs, and Orange.